Passenger train services • Main line services / Ticketing • High Speed Rail • Eurostar

Note: For educational purpose only. This page is meant purely as a documentation tool and has no legal effect. It is not a substitute for the official page of the operating company, manufacturer or official institutions. It cannot be used for staff training, which is the responsibility of approved institutions and companies.

The company

Rolling stock

Train services

Performance

Key points

• An accumulation of requirements needed to run on very different infrastructures ;
• The arrival of the e320 Class 374 ;
• The management of the fleet today after the merger with Thalys

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On this page

• The TMST’s operations before 2015 ;
• The arrival of the e320 Class 374 ;
• The management after 2024

Rolling‑stock operation

As of 1 January 2024, the new Eurostar—having absorbed Thalys—found itself operating four different rolling‑stock types. Two series were approved for Channel Tunnel services, while the other two were restricted to continental operations. The figure opposite shows in detail on which line(s) each trainset was deployed.

Unsurprisingly, both the TMST (in yellow) and the TGV‑Réseau (in red) had very clearly defined operating areas. These two TGV types, from the same era and using the same DC traction technology, never operated in Germany, as they were never fitted with 15 kV AC. The presence of dedicated UK border‑control terminals only at Paris‑Nord, Brussels‑Midi and Lille‑Europe explains why the TMST never ran beyond Brussels. The TGV‑R, for its part, was a withdrawn SNCF series transferred to Thalys and already equipped with 1.5 kV DC, making it easy to operate in the Netherlands, whose network uses this voltage. Both TMST and TGV‑R required the train protection systems of all three countries.

To serve Germany, SNCF proposed—again with GEC‑Alsthom—a TGV with new power cars, similar to the TGV‑Duplex units entering service at the time. The design was revised, and the trainsets built for Thalys used the same trailers as the TGV‑Réseau.

Produced between 1996 and 1997, these 17 PBKA trainsets (Paris–Brussels–Cologne–Amsterdam, in pink) are quadri‑voltage, but were never intended for the UK, which was outside Thalys’ commercial scope. The PBKA units introduced synchronous motors, unlike the TMST and TGV‑R.

A major shock came in 2010 when Eurostar—by then a British commercial company—selected Siemens to supply new Channel Tunnel trainsets. The e320 (for 320 km/h) is a UK‑compliant version of the Velaro platform. Entering service in 2015–2016, these units, equipped with asynchronous motors, meet Eurotunnel requirements, with a length increased to 398.92 m and 894 seats, compared with 394 m and 750 seats on the TMST. At the end of 2014, seven additional units were ordered, bringing the British fleet to 17 Class 374 e320 trainsets.

The Dutch desire for a direct link to London prompted Eurostar to launch, on 4 April 2019, a service to Amsterdam (via Rotterdam, in blue). It was only after the pandemic that both stations obtained the secure departure facilities required by the UK, which is not part of Schengen.

As of 1 July 2026, all four train types were still in service, with their duties distributed as shown in the figure. The urgent need to replace the life‑expired TMST and TGV‑Réseau units led, in October 2025, to a major order for 30 new TGV‑M trainsets from Alstom, branded Celestia, followed by 20 additional options in 2026. This will significantly reshape and simplify Eurostar’s operating pattern in the years ahead.

The TMST’s operations to London before 2015

The operation of the TMST units was probably the greatest technical challenge in the company’s entire history. The reason was simple: it was the first time a train designed on the Continental network entered a British railway system that had, until then, remained completely insular. On these routes between Paris, Brussels and London, everything was new — including the passage through the Channel Tunnel.

The TGV TMST Class 373, later also branded Eurostar e300, was a trainset specifically designed for international services through the Channel Tunnel. The TMST consortium (Groupe TGV Transmanche created in 1987) was given the task of building a train that no-one had designed before. It’s no exaggeration to say that, for the time, the establishment of the Eurostar service in cooperation was a real technical and commercial challenge, given that the desiderata of three nationalities of customers had to be satisfied, which was not the easiest thing to do.

The fleet comprised 38 trainsets, including 31 for London–Paris–Brussels services and 7 for regional operations, because the ambition was to run beyond London towards Birmingham or Manchester. These shorter TMST called ‘North of London’ has 355m. All these trainsets used DC traction motors, the only available high‑power technology at a time when the SNCF/Alsthom partnership dominated European high‑speed rail.

The trainset was derived from the classic TGV architecture used by SNCF, meaning an articulated formation with shared Jacobs bogies, as on the TGV PSE and TGV Atlantique. In practice, the Class 373 TMST is a paired half‑set, forming a total length of 375 m for the Three Capitals units. The idea was that, in the event of a serious incident, passengers from one half‑set could be transferred to the other for evacuation. This procedure has, as far as is known, never had to be used.

Highly exacting requirements
The main reason for the complexity of Eurostar rolling stock lies in the accumulation of requirements needed to run on very different infrastructures. This accumulation was more than a simple addition: some constraints pushed the limits of what was technically possible. A characteristic example illustrates this situation: the concentration of electrical equipment inside the power car, due to the need to operate under voltages as different as 25 kV AC in France or Belgium (3kV DC and 25kV) and 750 V DC third‑rail in Britain.

This resulted in the need to install extremely bulky equipment—essentially an onboard electrical substation—inside a single power car. At the same time, the Channel Tunnel’s safety requirement for train separability imposed a 394‑m train with only two power cars, whereas a French high‑speed train running as a double set (two coupled units with equivalent seating capacity) would normally have four power cars.

The combination of constraints led to the design of a Eurostar train with only two power cars whose total power output was just 75% of a TGV operating in double formation, which means that each of the two locomotives had to deliver one and a half times the power of an equivalent TGV motor car unit. As a result, acceleration on high‑speed lines was slightly slower than that of a classic TGV, leaving less margin to keep to the timetable.

A compact assembly of period technology therefore had to be fitted into a very restricted space, forcing electrical clearance distances close to the minimum required for such equipment—while the Eurostar operated in the very humid, dusty environment characteristic of the Channel Tunnel.

Consequences: A very high sensitivity to electrical arcing in cold and snowy weather, especially during tunnel crossings, and a particular sensitivity to high temperatures due to the high electrical power density. This required stronger ventilation in a confined environment. These rather novel technical aspects have made it difficult to operate the TMST trains, particularly in terms of keeping to the timetable.

The traffic through the Channel Tunnel is heavily constrained because of the heterogeneity of train speeds: 160 km/h for Eurostars, 140 km/h for passenger and lorry shuttles, and 120 km/h or even 100 km/h for the very rare freight trains. Eurostar services must therefore slot themselves between these different traffic flows, reaching the tunnel portal to the exact minute.

Significant progress was achieved between Eurotunnel and Eurostar, working jointly with SNCF and EWS, whose Transmanche traffic operations centre shares premises in Lille with the Eurostar operations centre.

Several actions were taken:

• Timetable design — notably reducing from 30% to 10% the proportion of Eurostar paths scheduled in 3‑minute succession, a configuration that made the second train highly vulnerable to delays if the first one ran even a few minutes late.
• Reprogramming rules — adjusting the handling of delayed freight trains before they reached the tunnel, so as to avoid any interference with Eurostar paths.
• Real‑time regulation — ensuring both that Eurostars arriving on time could enter the tunnel in their allocated slot (95% compliance in the 2000s) and that those running more than three minutes late could still be inserted as efficiently as possible (50% of these were regulated within the tunnel, with less than two minutes of additional delay).

The major challenge of the side‑mounted third rail system
The Class 373 encountered a demanding operating environment on the Kent network between 1994 and 2007, where its high‑speed design met the limits of a suburban third‑rail system. Built for the 25 kV AC system of continental high‑speed lines, it had to draw power from the Southern Region’s 750 V supply, reducing its output to roughly 28% of its nominal capability. A 750‑tonne train engineered for rapid acceleration suddenly behaved like a commuter unit, constrained not by its own engineering but by the infrastructure beneath it. Its speed was capped at 160 km/h, the maximum permitted on Network SouthEast metals before HS1 reshaped the corridor. Long before entering service, French engineers doubted whether stable current collection from the third rail was even feasible. Their concerns led to a nocturnal full‑speed trial using a modified set between Tonbridge and Ashford, an experiment that ultimately confirmed the physical viability of the concept.

Maintenance

Since the project initially operated as a cooperative, in which each participant had to contribute its share, SNCF, SNCB and Eurostar UK each provided a dedicated maintenance depot. These were Le Landy, north of Paris, Forest near Brussels‑Midi, and North Pole in west London. All of them were newly built facilities, with unprecedented dimensions, since in practice they had to be able to accommodate a full 394‑metre trainset. In addition, Forest and Le Landy were also tasked with maintaining other TGV trainsets (Thalys, SNCF TGV‑Réseau), whereas North Pole did not have such responsibilities.

In London, a depot was specifically built for the TMST fleet and Class 92 locomotives when Eurostar services started. It was designed to accommodate complete 20-car TMST trainsets and provided heavy maintenance facilities. The depot cost approximately £75 million and included multiple long maintenance roads with overhead electrification and third-rail access.

The arrival of the CTRL, Britain’s first high‑speed line

From 2015 onwards, the arrival of the Siemens Class 374 e320 led to the withdrawal of much of the Class 373 fleet, while Eurostar retained a handful of units, refurbished in the new livery, for services between London, Paris, Brussels and certain ski trains to Bourg‑Saint‑Maurice.

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